Feedback related to Vana'Bout

[Alhanelem]

You are fixated with balancing populations, most people not only don't care about that but like it how it is.

I'm not "fixated" on anything- you keep saying that like I have tunnel vision or something- I'm fully aware of the factors and issues at play, I'm not just making blind suggestions.


Most people may not explicitly care, but everyone's experience will be better if server populations are better balanced. That doesn't mean making every server perfectly equal i.e. forcing people to move or whatever, it just means the community i.e. reddit needs to stop pushing people towards one server, mostly. Your comments mostly come across as "How dare anyone close my precious overpopulated server or encourage anyone to transfer. HOW DARE THEY! like it's some kind of terrible thing. Asura isn't going to die overnight just because the devs hit the pause button. They know better than you or anyone else about the state of the servers and what they can handle and what problems and issues there may be.

The game has a bunch of servers for a reason. Because the server systems can't handle the entire playerbase on one. Asura has too many players. A couple other servers aren't that far away. Then there are servers with not enough players. The solution seems clear.

[radar]

The system should bend to the desires of the players, the players don't want balanced servers because FFXI is not a normal mmorpg (the world and community is important on XI, in a way it's not on almost every other mmo). Some players want small servers (<500), some players want big servers (3-4k).

If you force everyone to be on equalized servers, they will quit playing and it won't matter anyway.

There is normally no problem on Asura because people do different things, the problem with congestion now is because they removed the XP and other campaigns early and so everyone is fixated on Ambsucade due to Vanabout instead of getting XP, farming cards, doing dyna or whatever else.

The entire point of the campaigns was to diversify the things people did, instead of just everyone fixating on one thing.

XI does not have instancing, it cannot function in a world where everyone is doing 1 thing exclusively.

[Alhanelem]

If you force everyone to be on equalized servers, they will quit playing and it won't matter anyway.

No one said anything about forcing anyone to do anything. I don't want to see merges or splits.

Stopping character creation/transfer doesn't force anyone on Asura to leave, but every person that does will make the place they go to a better place, and eventually they may release the lock. But they should take this further and offer increased EXP/CP/EP/currency gains/something for a period of time to incentivize people to transfer off until their goals are achieved.

We're dealing with an increase in activity right now, this is a good thing. The fact that they had to consider this at all is a good thing, because it means the game is doing better than they expected.

[Uroah]

Supremely disappointed in your efforts in these events. I was entirely unable to participate due to the bots running ambuscade nonstop for the entire duration of the event. And the excessive reliance on ambuscade.

I'm not going to sit in line for an hour every day as a requirement for participation. This was disgusting.

[Alhanelem]

Supremely disappointed in your efforts in these events. I was entirely unable to participate due to the bots running ambuscade nonstop for the entire duration of the event. And the excessive reliance on ambuscade.

I'm not going to sit in line for an hour every day as a requirement for participation. This was disgusting.

Well, there's a simple solution: Get the heck off Asura. You already know they're not going to do anything so why not make things easier for yourself?

[radar]

Well, there's a simple solution: Get the heck off Asura. You already know they're not going to do anything so why not make things easier for yourself?

Do you seriously not know who you're replying to?

[Alhanelem]

Do you seriously not know who you're replying to?

Yeah, I do, and I know they won't even read much less respond, but I'll say it anyway.

[Dragoy]

At last the round 6 is over and done.

I think this was the last time I'll go for the perfect score, so I can ignore the thing again fully. \ö/

That is unless things actually get fixed, and I'll have some reason to do it again.

I can't think of any of the feedback for improvements having been implemented in any way yet, still, not from the English side, nor from the Japanese side (which thankfully is giving pretty much the same feedback the English side is). It does often take time to fix things, though, so maybe there is some hope left yet.

Overall my feedback for this round is the same as it was last round, but here's a list of "highlights":

Good

- No "orb battles" so no seals/crests/time wasted on those.
- Not as many daily objectives.
- No total Gallantry objective.
- Reported text and menu issues have been fixed (and so far no new ones spotted, though the Ballista! objective did lead me to a new issue (to me), but it has probably been there since ages past).

Of course since this was a "special round", all of these good points may be turned around for the next round again.

Something Betwixt Good and Bad

- Ballista! This can thankfully be cleared without actually doing it, by having two adventurers sign up in the Diorama, and then end the match as soon as possible. Getting a match going outside the Diorama can be difficult since it requires at least 6 adventurers to sign up (maybe the objective could be cleared for just having signed up?). Also a good thing it was not a daily objective.

Bad

- Too many daily objectives.
- Log-in points used for battlefield entry for daily objectives.
- Daily objectives with battlefields that are difficult, if not impossible to solo depending on jobs available.
- A lot of the rewards still make no sense (10,000 EXP!?), or are ultimately utterly unappealing.
- Too many objectives that require spending time in Ambuscade just to clear objectives, which will not be cleared while participating in Ambuscade in a normal fashion (which for example "clear an Ambuscade" does; that much is probably fine).
- Days with only Ambuscade daily objectives (provided the punishment for having skipped objectives hasn't messed with the list).
- Total damage received in Ambuscade objective.

Super Duper Bad

- The title reward probably still requires 100% perfect clear of every and each objective every day (at least it isn't as bad as I thought it is some rounds ago, where I had the impression that it is awarded only to the first top 10 registrations, not everyone in top 10 regardless of timing (in reality though, it is only for those that get the top rank 1 score until people stop doing the thing)).
- The event does not start at Japanese midnight, but the daily objectives reset at Japanese midnight, meaning the first day is not a full 24 hour day.
- The event starts with the Monster Rearing objective, and since the event doesn't start at the day-change where the objectives reset, many people have already used up their chance to clear this one earlier during their day.
- Uncleared objectives remain through the next day, as a double-punishment for not clearing them.

Potential Points for Possible Improvements

There already are a lot of good ideas around here forums, both the English and Japanese side, that I'll try not to repeat too much, but:

- Let the event start, or reset daily at a time that results into every day being a 24-hour day.
- If the first day absolutely must not be a 24-day, at least do not start with an objective such as Monster Rearing, which can be done only once per day.
- If uncompleted objectives must remain for the duration of 2 full days, at least give us the actual new objective for the day as well. This would, to some extent, work as a catch-up mechanism in that, one could miss out on doing 1 full day of objectives, but still complete them the next day, along with the objectives for that day.
- Do less Ambuscade related things that require taking time in Ambuscade. In a way, the Gallantry objective was actually better than the Receive Damage objective, since it will be cleared by actually clearing battles, not by standing idle in there, "tanking" things for 30-60 minutes if not more. Of course doing something like clearing Normal Intense battles as a samurai without a proper tank will clear this one "naturally" too, but what about the bards and white mages and such? In general, the point usually is to *not take damage* so this objective is just weird from the start.
- Maybe award the title for reaching Gold Tier points?

----

Probably forgot to include some things, but that should be most of it.

I hope the next Vana'bout round will do better. I believe it can do better!

[Alhanelem]

Personally I want to keep Ballista in it, sure, most people will cheese it but I've had some good times as a result of it. Which is really what these events are supposed to do.

[Dragoy]

Personally I want to keep Ballista in it, sure, most people will cheese it but I've had some good times as a result of it. Which is really what these events are supposed to do.

Yeah, I'm fine with it staying in general, though might adjust the completion conditions for the non-miniature version.

Think most comments aimed at it on the Japanese side I've seen, have been negative though, but I'm not sure those will have any more effect than the comments on this side.